


Ten Broken Beds

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Beds, Established Relationship, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Married Sex, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:39:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The title says it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kingsroad

**Author's Note:**

> So I’d been toying with an idea for a bit of silly fluff titled something like “The Ten Times Jaime Made Brienne Squeak Inappropriately in Public”. Then calicovirus on Tumblr asked for a fic about married!Jaime and Brienne breaking successive beds on Tarth and running out of excuses, and YellowDelaney suggested “Breaking Bed(s)” as the title. This fic is the unholy crossbreed of those ideas. For purposes of fluffiness, let’s just pretend Jaime was not in the Kingsguard, and Brienne did not have a quest to complete at the conclusion of ADWD, shall we? I own nothing but the silliness.

The first time happened the night after they rejoined Jaime’s host on the Kingsroad. Rumors ran wild through the camp that their commander and his odd companion had battled and vanquished an undead sorceress and her mighty army somewhere in the Riverlands. Jaime encouraged these rumors, so that from midday till nightfall the size of Stoneheart’s forces had grown from a couple dozen hedge knights and orphaned boys to several hundred bloodthirsty Northerners with some wights mixed in for good measure. 

Brienne of Tarth refused to answer any questions about the battle, and seemed to make a point of avoiding Jaime, always lingering in a part of the camp where he was not. Her squire, the pale boy called Pod, and the hedge knight who went by the name Hyle Hunt avoided Jaime Lannister as well, Pod sticking close to Brienne while Hyle joined the first drunken dice game he could find and put down roots there. 

Some time after sundown, Jaime summoned Brienne to his tent, then threw her squire and all his squires out. “The lady and I have some unfinished business to discuss,” he said ominously. 

Peck and Pod huddled under their cloaks by a fire, feeling sleepy and wondering how much longer the discussion would go on before they could all retire to their beds in the commander’s tent. This was how Pia found them, her arms full of freshly laundered sheets. 

“Such a ruckus they’s making,” she said. “I went up to the tent, to deliver these sheets, like, and they was going at it. Shouting and cursing and carrying on. I think lord commander was crying too, weeping like a babe!”

“She lied to him to save me and Ser Hyle,” Pod mumbled. “He must be furious.” 

Pia looked between the two young men. “We should go and listen,” she said. 

They stared at her as though she had suggested stepping into a cage with a hungry lion for a bit of a chat. 

“Trust me, I know these things,” Pia declared from her lofty heights of experience. “When a man and a woman’s fighting like that, only one way it can end. Well,” she paused, considering. “Two ways, but I doubts as they’ll kill each other.” 

Pod remained unconvinced eavesdropping on Ser Lady and the Lion of Lannister was a sound idea, but he went along with it so he could be there to protect Ser Lady in case they did try to kill each other. Peck, of course, did whatever Pia told him. 

The unlikely trio of spies crept up to the large tent of crimson cloth trimmed with gold and went around to the back, closest to where the lord commander’s camp bed was on the other side of the tent cloth. 

No shouting, cursing or weeping could be heard, but something was definitely happening. There was an odd metallic noise, like hot steel being bent out of shape. The distinct ripping noise of cloth being removed precipitately. And a woman’s muffled grunts of pain. 

Pod had his hand on his dagger and was about to slice open the tent cloth and go to Ser Lady’s aid when Pia grabbed his arm and dragged him down to where she and Peck crouched on the cold ground. “Listen,” she hissed. 

The sound of metal bending took on a rhythmic cadence, like someone slowly, hesitantly testing it for endurance. The woman’s pained moans changed key as well, started to sound more like cries of surprise. Then the metal groaned sharply, and so did the woman, a sound like swords clashing and steam hissing. 

Pia looked at Peck. “You sounded just like that the first time you bedded me,” she said, a touch smugly. 

Pod’s eyes went round and big as saucers. “You don’t mean…”

Before Pia could answer, Jaime Lannister’s drawl reached them from inside the tent, instantly recognizable, although he sounded a touch out of breath, his voice ragged with emotion. “I’m sorry, Brienne,” he said. “It won’t hurt next time, I promise.” 

Pia looked from Peck to Pod, and nodded sagely. Pod blushed. Peck watched Pia in utter awe. 

Inside the tent, Brienne was speaking, her voice even more ragged than Jaime’s. “It’s all right. I think… I think I deserve… some pain. Could you, maybe, do something… a diversion…” 

Jaime chuckled in a way which made Pia grin and the two boys shift uncomfortably. “You mean a distraction, my lady warrior.” 

The sound of a wet kiss was replaced by a loud, persistent sucking noise. It went on and on, while Pia grinned and grinned, forgetting even to cover her mouth and hide her broken teeth. Brienne’s moans of incipient pleasure rose in pitch as the sucking went on, modulated into a breathless, demanding squeal. The rhythmic metallic groaning picked up speed as well, until the cacophony of sucking, metal bending and groaning, and woman moaning seemed to fill the world. 

Just when Pod decided the earth would not be kind and open to swallow him whole, the night was rent by two sounds. One was the combined, wordless cry of a man and a woman, equal parts surprise, pleasure and pain. The other was the high-pitched scream of the camp bed finally giving up in the face of mounting pressure. Metal broke, something heavy crashed to the carpeted floor of the tent, a woman cried out more in embarrassment than in shock, and a man laughed in loud, breathless delight. 

From their hiding place behind the tent, Peck, Pia and Pod heard what sounded like the entire Lannister host approach the front of the tent, drawn by that final crescendo of noise from within. Amidst men’s shouts and camp followers’ lewd speculation, just before the vanguard entered the tent to see what the trouble was, the trio behind the tent heard Jaime Lannister speak conversationally: “No use covering yourself up, wench, they’re all coming to see us. Your only chance of saving your honor and mine now is to accept this, my only remaining hand in marriage.” 

“Jaime.” 

Pod knew that tone, though he had only heard it once or twice before, when Ser Lady spoke Lannister’s name in her dreams. 

“Is that a yes, then?”

Before Brienne could answer, at least twenty men burst into the tent and sent up a loud, lewd cheer. 

Pia offered Pod and Peck a superior, close-mouthed grin. “I told you so, didn’t I?” she said.


	2. Kingsroad Part II

The second time was at an inn a sennight’s ride from King’s Landing. Hyle Hunt had decided to stay with the Lannister host in the hopes of attaching himself to some lord’s retinue once they reached the capital. His recent experiences in the Riverlands left him ill-disposed to the life of a solitary, wandering hedge knight, and the sight of Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister in Lannister’s tent on the night after their encounter with Stoneheart, naked as they had been on their first nameday, she blushing from head to toe, he grinning like a jester, robbed Hyle of all hopes he had entertained of wedding the Maid of Tarth. 

Well, a hungry man could not afford to be too proud when he lost a woman and her nice little island to another. Hyle was a reasonable man, but Jaime Lannister and reason had never kept close company, and so it was with some misgiving that Hyle answered Lannister’s request that night at the inn. 

“Bugger you, Lannister,” were Hyle’s exact words as he blocked the door to his room on the inn’s upper floor. “I gave my last gold dragon to get a featherbed for the night, and if you think you’ll get to fuck in it just because you’re lord commander of the bloody host, you’ve got another fucking thing coming.”

Lannister’s self-assured grin grew, if possible, even wider, making Hyle’s fist itch, while Brienne of Tarth did her damnedest to blend in with the corridor wall, and failed. Hyle took some small pleasure in seeing her embarrassment. Had _she_ asked him to switch rooms, he would have taken even greater pleasure in telling her to go lie with Lannister in the pigsty if she was in heat, but when Jaime Lannister pulled out his blasted, bottomless moneybag and clinked it in front of Hyle’s face, well… Hyle Hunt was a reasonable man, and he _had_ just given away his last gold dragon.

“I hope there’s bedbugs,” he muttered sourly as he re-counted the ten gold dragons Lannister counted out into his palm with exaggerated care. “I hope the sheets haven’t been washed since the beginning of the war.”

“Sweet dreams,” Jaime replied cheerfully as he shut the door behind himself and Brienne. 

The room which had originally fallen to Lannister and Brienne the Whore of Tarth had only a straw pallet. But Hyle had slept on much worse in his time, and the weight of the coins in his pocket was starting to improve his mood as he took off his boots and lay down. 

That was until he realized the wall he shared with his old room was so thin it could only be called a wall if the term stretched to include barriers made of parchment. Or Brienne of Tarth’s honor. 

Hyle lay there, on scratchy straw, Lannister gold burning a cold hole in his side, and listened to Brienne huff and giggle and sigh in ways he never would have thought possible from the strapping, muscular, scrupulously proper woman he had thought he knew. The sounds of licking and lapping were as loud as the noises a hog at the trough would make. Hyle wondered if That Fucker Lannister was making extra noise just to irritate him. He balled his hands into fists, and was considering marching over there, shoving the gold into Lannister’s sticky gob, and throwing them both out of his room in their nameday suits, when Brienne let out a high-pitched cry which had nothing to do with what Lannister was doing between her legs. 

“Ow! It bites!”

“Not yet, I haven’t, but if my lady insists…”

“No.” A body was shoved aside as Brienne clambered off the bed, the wooden frame sighing in relief to have her weight off it. “I think there _are_ bedbugs. Ow!” Hyle could hear her begin to scratch. 

“Brienne, stop doing that.” Lannister’s voice had a dark quality Hyle recognized: the voice of a man who was about to spread the nearest pair of legs and shove his cock into the first available hole, and let all seven hells come down upon his head if they will. 

Brienne was still scratching, murmuring about how she itched, and how did the hungry little things get all the way up there… 

Lannister snorted like a horse. “Where’s my cloak?”

Hyle shut his eyes and shook his head at the predictable sounds which followed: the swish of a long cloak being picked up and spread over the offending sheets, the squeak of a very large woman being felled on top of the cloak, her outraged protest at such treatment replaced by a long, low moan, her breath speeding up with the rapid slap of flesh on flesh, Lannister grunting and the bed creaking with her. 

As much as it pained him to admit it, Hyle had to give it to the man: he certainly knew a thing or two about what to do once he’d stuck it in, if the noises Brienne was making were any evidence. 

Hyle covered his ears with his hands, but that did not prevent him hearing their moans rapidly ascend, while the creaking of the ancient, much-abused bed frame deepened until the featherbed sounded like an animal in pain. 

This time, the bed was done before they were. The frame cracked like a horse’s broken back under the persistent assault, cracked with a sound like a sudden clap of thunder. Hyle was disappointed to realize the floor had not broken as well, and dumped the rutting couple into the common room below. Still, hearing them suddenly wrenched from those lofty peaks was reward enough.

“Seven hells,” Lannister muttered. “The standards of metalworking _and_ woodworking craftsmanship have certainly gone down over the years.” 

“Sweet dreams,” Hyle shouted through the wall, and was dubiously rewarded by Lannister’s unabashed laugh and Brienne’s mortified groan.


	3. King’s Landing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s also pretend Kevan Lannister did not get killed by Varys, and is still Tommen’s regent after ADWD. And that Cersei being charged with adultery and incest need not mean Jaime would be brought up on similar charges or have an impact on Tommen’s claim on the throne. We’re in Crazy-AU-La-La Land with this fic, so just roll with it, ‘K?

The third time, it was not their bed which broke, but a window. 

Brienne was certain her eyes would jump clean out of her head if she stared at her husband’s self-satisfied smile any harder. 

“You jest?” she squeaked so as not to be heard over the chatter and singing at their rather subdued wedding feast.

By the time they got around to exchanging vows in the Royal Sept, the tales of their exploits – in which rumors and even a ballad or two about the trail of broken furniture they’d left in their wake loomed somewhat larger than the Riverlands campaign or the clash with Lady Stoneheart – had obviated any need for anyone to pretend that the Maid of Tarth was still a maid. That took away some of the pomp attendant on a noble wedding, not that Brienne minded: a modest feast and no bedding ceremony suited her fine. 

Leave it to Jaime to get bored and decide to spice things up. 

“Not even a little bit,” he replied happily. “This is my one and only chance – _our_ one and only chance – before Uncle Kevan ships her off to Casterly Rock on the morrow. If I thought nuncle had a sense of humor, I would suspect he deliberately delayed her departure till after we were wed.”

Brienne shook her head. “No,” she said, sounding more resolute than she felt. “I will not aid you in shaming your sister so.” 

Jaime eyed his wife a moment before he set down his cup of Arbor Red and leaned in so he could speak very quietly and be heard very clearly. 

“You speak of her shame as though it had any substance,” he said. “Do not pretend the thought does not appeal, Brienne. I know you worry about her, her being here, inside my head.” He grabbed Brienne’s hand and used his golden hand to turn her head so she had to look at him, a blush creeping up her neck. “I do not wish to share our marriage bed with Cersei any more than you do,” he explained earnestly.

Brienne mulled it over. “And this will… help? Remove her?”

“Like a tick from the bedding, yes.” He grinned at her moue, the shared memory of a night at a certain inn by the Kingsroad cloaking them in an inviolable, private space closed to all others. 

Brienne still felt some misgiving, but she nodded. Jaime kissed her, a tender kiss of more gratitude than lust, but a salacious cheer went up from the other tables regardless. His cousin Daven, looking more leonine than ever with his luxuriant hair and beard, stood and toasted the couple, and demanded in his cheery, booming voice that they retire to their bedchamber at once, so everyone could drink their health and sing tavern songs, since they would not allow a proper bedding ceremony. Regent Kevan Lannister nodded his solemn approval on Brienne’s right, while King Tommen grinned with childish incomprehension on Jaime’s left. 

Brienne blushed anew when she saw the large open window in the bedchamber set aside for their use until a calm in the Winter weather allowed them to depart for Tarth. The cold night air made the room far chillier than a newly wedded couple’s chamber had any right to be, despite the braziers thoughtfully positioned all around the bed, but what truly made Brienne uneasy was the view. 

Their chamber overlooked a small, solitary tower reserved for highborn prisoners. It currently had only one occupant: former Queen Regent Cersei Lannister, stripped of all her titles and privileges after her trial by the Faith, about to be sent into ignominious exile and lifelong house arrest in her ancestral demesne. For all her dislike of Cersei and what she stood for, Brienne could not help feeling a surge of pity at the downfall of that once proud woman. 

She set aside such thoughts, as she always did, when Jaime wrapped his arms around her from behind, started kissing her neck, and walked her, step by giggling, stumbling step, toward the bed, which positively groaned under its pile of goose-down covers, blankets and furs. 

“This one will need no help from us before it breaks,” Jaime jested as he pushed some of the covers off the bed. 

Brienne glared at him good-naturedly before she burrowed under the remaining bedding and reached for him. As Jaime’s mouth found the softest bit of skin on her throat and his fingers and stump roamed over her as though she were a relief map, Brienne relaxed and closed her eyes, yet found herself reluctant to give voice to her pleasure. 

Jaime was inside her, moving slowly, still opening her up and teasing her a bit, when he kissed her ear and whispered: “You’ve never been shy before, wench.” 

Brienne merely huffed and ran her hands down his back. Jaime responded by lifting off her and wrapping her legs around him as he knelt over her supine form. 

“I will hear you, lady wife,” he said on the first sharp thrust of his hips. Brienne’s breath caught, but still she would not moan. “The whole Red Keep will hear you.” He grinned, and rolled her nipple between his fingers while he pressed his stump just over where they were joined, slick, and moving together. “You promised.” 

She had not actually said the words, but she _had_ nodded in acquiescence, and she was a woman of her word. So Brienne let herself arch into him, and moaned and gasped and stuttered his name loudly to the ceiling and the night beyond the window. Let herself touch his face, his arms, let her fingers ghost over his nipples, hard buds in the cold air. Jaime’s grin became an intent grimace as he fucked his wife, fucked her _as_ his wife for the first time, making their bed protest in a way they had both come to expect. 

Brienne’s hands slid down Jaime’s back and lower, gripping, urging him on. Brienne could not be certain as a rising tide of pleasure slowly engulfed her, but it was just possible the revelers in the hall far below sang and cheered and crashed their goblets together more lustily as the echo of the coupling reached them. 

What was absolutely certain was that just as Brienne and Jaime’s cries became almost embarrassingly sharp, like those of a kestrel falling on its prey, the night was rudely torn asunder by the sound of breaking glass coming from the tower opposite. The crash of glass shards on the cobblestones of the yard was augmented by the reverberating clangor of metal. Later they discovered it had been Cersei Lannister’s favorite gold wine cup which had shattered the window of her cell. 

All Brienne heard was her husband roaring her name as he spent himself inside her and fell, boneless, on top of her, and a blue streak of the vilest curses and imprecations ever uttered by a well-bred lady. They issued from the broken window and echoed around the Red Keep as though a thousand ravens were cawing and beating their wings against the ancient stone walls. 

Jaime could hardly draw breath but still he laughed, his face buried in Brienne’s shoulder, while shrieks of ‘Filthy sow’ and ‘Treacherous worm’ poured out of the tower opposite. 

Brienne wrapped her arms around Jaime and whispered into his sweat-matted hair: “Don’t be mean, my lord husband.” Despite her intention to remain solemn, a small smile tugged at her lips while evil words poured into her ears as a strange sort of benediction.


	4. Tarth

The fourth time it happened, the consequences were quite different from what Jaime had expected. 

He did not much appreciate being summoned to his goodfather’s solar like an errant youth in need of a scolding. Especially since he and Brienne had been living on Tarth for nearly a full moon’s turn, and Jaime was yet to catch his goodfather’s eye over a meal or across the training yard where he drilled Tarth’s aspirant squires without having Selwyn Tarth scowl at him ferociously from beneath lowering brows, eyes like chips of blue ice and nothing like Brienne’s, his moustache a-bristle, for all the world like a walrus preparing to attack. It made Jaime feel as though he were on the edge of some Northern precipice, about to be flung to the freezing waters below, rather than standing on solid ground on an island in the Narrow Sea where even the tightening vise of Winter did not feel too bad. 

Brienne told him to be patient and give her father time to warm to him, but patience had never been one of Jaime’s good qualities. So it was almost with a sense of relief that he left Pod and Pia in charge of clearing up the mess in the bedchamber he shared with Brienne, and ventured into Selwyn’s solar, ready to cross fists, swords or words, as his goodfather chose. 

He was barely seated in the grudgingly offered chair by the fire before Lord Tarth began without preamble. “I do not know what the custom is in the Westerlands or in King’s Landing, but here on Tarth destroying your host’s furniture is considered bad manners, Lannister.” 

Jaime considered telling his goodfather to stop saying his family name, which was now also Brienne’s name, like a malediction, and treating him as though he were a guest at Evenfall Hall, there only temporarily and on sufferance. Or, he reflected, he might point out that some damage to furniture was only to be expected, given his and Brienne’s history. Or that it was a minor miracle the rickety old bed which had been Brienne’s for years before she left to follow Renly Baratheon to war, and became their marriage bed upon arrival, had lasted even as long as it had. 

Jaime examined each of these possibilities, and discarded them one by one. Finally he fixed his goodfather with his most supercilious smile, and said: “Would you blame the horse if its rider pushed it too hard and thus broke its back? No? Then no more should you blame me if your daughter rides me like she does, and all that gets broken is the bed.” 

For possibly the only time in his life, Jaime had a moment to ponder the notion that his clever, barbed tongue may have gone too far at last. The Evenstar squeezed his hands, even bigger and stronger than Brienne’s, into mallet-like fists, and turned a shade of bright wine-red to rival his daughter’s most impressive blushes. 

The moment stretched, and stretched, and stretched some more. Jaime was assessing how quickly he could jump out of his chair, roll on the floor to get under his goodfather’s first swing, and reach the ornate swords hanging on the wall, when Selwyn Tarth burst into a big man’s loud, full-bellied, uproarious laughter. Jaime grinned, a bit uncertainly, but as the Evenstar laughed and laughed, and finally leaned back in his chair, whooping and trying to catch his breath and wiping his eyes, Jaime allowed himself a small laugh of his own. 

“I shudder,” Selwyn gasped, “to think… what your first bedding… was like. She must… have left you… black and blue.” 

Jaime grinned very, very widely, and decided he would not tell his goodfather about the night at his camp, and at the inn, and the afternoons in the woods and fields by the Kingsroad, and the first night after the wedding. It occurred to Jaime that Lord Selwyn’s newfound good faith might not stretch quite so far as to find the humor in Jaime taking Brienne’s maidenhead and then continuing to bed her before their marriage, in circumstances which ensured the Seven Kingdoms were justified, however briefly, in calling her the Kingslayer’s whore. So he settled for a safer topic, and told Selwyn about the night before he and Brienne left King’s Landing for Tarth, when their temporary marriage bed at the Red Keep finally gave up the ghost under their exertions. 

“If and when she does break my back one day, I trust you will give me a hero’s funeral,” Jaime said diplomatically while Selwyn chuckled at his tale. “You’ve raised a big, healthy wen… woman, goodfather.”

Selwyn seemed pleased and proud to hear this. Then his face grew somber, bushy eyebrows cocked menacingly, though he was still flushed and glassy-eyed with laughter. 

“If you ever hurt her…” he growled, and it was plain he did not just mean while sporting in bed. 

Jaime lifted his hands, the fleshly and the golden, and gestured at the silver threads in his hair, the crow’s feet starting to etch themselves into the skin around his eyes. 

“Believe me, ser, whatever beds get broken in the future, Brienne is safer with me than she was even with a sword in her hand. I could hardly keep up with your daughter even when I was a man whole. And she never did suffer any of my many foolishnesses gladly.” 

“Well,” Selwyn conceded, relaxing in his chair. “We were all young and overflowing with enthusiasm once.”

He looked so smug and knowing Jaime had to laugh, and when Selwyn joined him the sound of their laughter echoed through the yards and corridors of Evenfall Hall for a long time.


	5. Tarth Part II

The fifth time happened in the privacy of their bedchamber, yet the circumstances were still entirely too public for Brienne’s liking. 

It would have been all right, had Evenfall Hall not been crowded just then with lesser island lords visiting to pay homage to the Evenstar and his daughter and her new husband. As it was, all of Tarth witnessed the removal of yet another ruined bedstead from the wing where Brienne and Jaime’s bedchamber was, as far from the rest of the hall’s sleeping quarters as possible. Sound carried quite far over water and through stone, and the two of them never did learn to be quiet.

They never really tried, truth be told. 

“Smile, wench.” Jaime tried to whisper as they stood in the yard and watched several servants carry pieces of the broken bed out of the hall, but his arrogant voice carried even when he spoke quietly. “This is a badge of honor. A tourney knight’s favor to a maiden. Or not a maiden, but still.”

“Do _not_ call me wench in front of other people,” Brienne hissed angrily for what felt like the hundredth time. It was not easy to teach an aging lion new tricks. 

He eyed her with wicked amusement and slid his good hand around her waist, fingers squeezing her hip as though he would pull her even closer and dip his hand lower, cup her through her breeches and press to make her sigh and squirm. Never mind that every single lordling and his lady wife hosted at Evenfall just then lingered in the yard, eyes darting avidly between the broken bed and the two of them, while feigning a sudden great interest in the sky, the walls or the cobblestones. 

“I can hardly be blamed for the shockingly bad craftsmanship your island folk display in making bedsteads,” Jaime murmured, just close enough that the brush of his beard against her neck made her shiver, as he knew it would. “If I didn’t know better, I would suspect your lord father instructed Tarth’s carpenters to keep the joints loose and use old, rotten wood for our beds, just so he would have something with which to amuse himself.”

Brienne tried to glare at him out of the corner of her eye, but she had to admit it did not sound wholly improbable. For all that his size and title made him seem imposing and always so serious, Selwyn Tarth had a prankish, puckish streak to rival her husband’s. Not that Brienne would concede as much to Jaime. She sighed. 

“Perhaps we should keep separate beds until my father’s bannermen leave,” she murmured miserably. “This is not proper.”

She half expected Jaime to pinch her hip or speak angrily about it being too late for propriety. But he knew better than to allow her to provoke him into fighting, when that would only feed her stubbornness. Jaime had other means of getting around her, and used them mercilessly. 

“But if we do,” he said, dropping his voice, making sure he was not overheard for once, “who will suckle on you till you cry out so they hear you on the mainland? Who will make your nipples chafe at being bound up, come the morning? Who else aches for the feel of your mouth? Who will rest his poor old head between your thighs until you beg for more, and then give you more? What other lion will let you ride him till he’s in a lather, lady?” 

Brienne wanted to let her eyes flutter shut, wanted to squeeze her thighs together and lean into him and curse him for being able to do this to her, every single time and always. Instead she glanced down and to the side, and confirmed her suspicions: her husband’s words were having an effect on him as well, and he did not bother to hide it as he stood beside her, in front of all her father’s bannermen. So she shifted discreetly until she was standing half in front of Jaime, shielding his arousal from view with her wide hips. Jaime did what she expected him to do: he chuckled and pressed himself against her backside, grinding shamelessly. 

“Let’s go to Peck’s room,” he breathed into her ear. 

Brienne’s eyes found Jaime’s squire where he stood by the main door of the hall, supervising two servants who were bringing out the headboard of that unfortunate bed, the bored look of a man attending to a customary duty on his young, peach-fuzzed face. 

“Peck?” she asked, trying to swallow the catch in her voice as Jaime wrapped an arm around her waist. Most of the people in the yard were focused on the removal of the bed, casting only occasional, not really furtive glances at the Evenstar’s daughter and her notorious husband. Although they were not the center of attention, Brienne would have sworn Jaime got harder because he knew anyone who took a good look at them would see at once what he was doing. 

“Yes, Peck,” he ground out. “I let him fuck on my bed once. Fair’s fair, I say.” 

Brienne craned her neck as far back as she could. “A story for another time, perhaps,” she murmured, keeping her hips from rolling back into him only with a great effort of will. “First we must get indoors without everyone seeing the state you’re in. And figuring out a way _not_ to break poor Peck’s bed.”

“To hells with that,” Jaime growled. “If you don’t think I’m very, very close to giving your father’s bannermen a good look at just exactly how we keep breaking beds, wench, you don’t know me at all.” 

With that, he moved away from her and strode across the yard, his arousal plain for all to see. Brienne reflected that, for all his past misdeeds, she admired Jaime’s refusal to make excuses for himself. She considered offering the now openly staring bannermen an apologetic smile, but she realized her blush would rather spoil it. And anyway, although she would have words with Jaime about this later, she really couldn’t be bothered to feel embarrassment as she followed her husband into the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MotherofFirkins (guileandsubterfuge on Tumblr) staged this chapter with Jaime & Brienne crochet dolls: [behold!](http://guileandsubterfuge.tumblr.com/post/67859507089/for-miss-m-a-crochet-doll-interpretation-of)


	6. Tarth Part III

Pod had lost count. Ser Lady and Ser Jaime’s proneness to inflicting irreparable damage on furniture was well-known on Tarth and nearly legendary in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, but for Pod all it meant was having to supervise the removal of yet another ruined bedstead, or chair, or table, or linen chest, on one occasion Peck’s bed, and another time not one but two benches from the great hall at Evenfall. 

He was fairly certain clearing out broken furniture was not part of a squire’s regular duties, but then Pod’s squiring experiences had never been regular. With Tyrion Lannister, he had mostly spent his time pouring wine and fetching different odd, disturbing or just plain disreputable people to his lord’s chambers late at night. With Ser Lady, it had been all quests and being captured and being rescued. And eavesdropping on Ser Lady’s intimate moments, sometimes with Peck and Pia, other times with the Lannister host. Or the rest of Evenfall Hall. 

Still, Pod did not mind. On Tarth he received good training at arms from both Ser Jaime and Ser Lady, and sometimes Ser Jaime even wanted to talk about Tyrion, which made Pod feel a bit less like he had been an unwanted appendage, one day discarded by the Lannisters and picked up by Ser Lady out of the kindness of her big heart. And Pod had grown used to thinking of Peck and Pia as his brother and sister, even if they were a brother and sister who often bedded down together. 

It was after it fell to him to oversee the dismantling and removal of the second (or was it third?) bedstead that Pod decided to follow Ser Lady and Ser Jaime’s example, borrow a horse from the stables, and go riding for the rest of the day. It was a fine, crisp Winter morning, about as cold as it ever got on Tarth, and the air was so clear one could almost see the coast of Essos across the Narrow Sea if one squinted and let one’s imagination run wild. 

He really should have known better. After all, it wasn’t the first time they’d made use of alternative facilities when their own bed was broken. 

Yet Pod’s first thought on entering the stables was that a fox or a wild dog must have snuck in during the night and spooked the horses. The animals shifted in their stalls, snorting and pawing the straw. He entered the first stall and tried to soothe the palfrey which occupied it. The horse stopped snorting, but it still rolled its eye at Pod, as though warning him of a strange incorporeal presence haunting the stables. 

Pod often helped the stable boys take care of the horses. It was another duty which squires did not usually shoulder, but Pod liked it. It soothed him after dealing with human strangeness all day. So the horses knew him, and catching his scent they started to calm down and grow quiet. 

Quiet enough that Pod heard them at last. 

Some years earlier, he would have blushed and fled the stables. But he was almost a man grown now, had survived the Battle of the Blackwater and the Brotherhood Without Banners, had listened, albeit reluctantly, to Ser Lady lose her maidenhead to the man who had not been her husband, then. Pod had even lain with a couple of the kitchen girls since coming to Tarth. He knew a thing or two he had not known before. 

They were in the farthest stall, one empty of horses, though experience had taught Pod not to put it past them to use an occupied stall if the mood was upon them. The horses knew their smells, of course, although there was that peculiar sweaty, briny scent on the air which only rutting humans could produce. Pod guessed it must have been that and the sounds which had disturbed the animals. The unusual rustling. The labored grunts. The unmistakable, when once you’ve heard it, sound of flesh on flesh. The moans of the woman, which could have indicated pain, but Pod knew better now. Ser Lady was practically keening. 

“Come on, wench,” Ser Jaime gritted out, punctuating every couple of words with a grunt and a fleshy slap. “You usually finish fastest this way. My fucking knees are killing me.”

“I am on hands _and_ knees, ser,” she retorted, her breaths coming short and rapid. “And it’s cold and the straw is prickly.”

Had he not been so out of breath, Ser Jaime might have laughed. As it was, he could manage no more than another grunt. “What became of the fearless warrior who once fought a bear? Bugger it, don’t answer. Let me give you a hand.” 

Pod knew enough, had done and heard enough, to recognize at once the sucking sound fingers made on wet flesh, the fevered slap of thighs on buttocks. The noises Ser Lady was making told him it wouldn’t be long now. He turned and left, but didn’t go far. While he lingered in the yard, scuffing his foot on the cobblestones, it occurred to him that Ser Lady had told him the truth that morning, strictly speaking. They _had_ gone riding. 

They emerged some minutes later, flushed, clothes askew and festooned with straw, Ser Lady rubbing her sore palms with a frown. Pod sidled toward the stable door.

“Ah, Podrick,” Ser Jaime said when he spotted the squire. “I think the straw in the last stall might be broken. Have it replaced, will you?”

Pod did blush then, as did Ser Lady. 

As they walked back to the hall, bickering gently, Ser Jaime brushing straw from the back of his wife’s jerkin, it occurred to Pod that Ser Jaime did not always jest when he seemed to jest. With a sigh, he went to saddle the palfrey. He would speak to the head groom when he returned about having a fresh bale of straw placed in the empty stall. The horses would be the better for it, as would Ser Lady and Ser Jaime if a new bed was not delivered to them quickly enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More crochet-doll goodness courtesy of MotherofFirkins (guileandsubterfuge): [behold!](http://guileandsubterfuge.tumblr.com/post/68167228466/for-chapter-6-of-ten-broken-beds-i-had-to-use)


	7. King’s Landing Part II

The seventh time, Jaime had the absolute best intentions, but his attempt at improvisation left something to be desired. 

The Citadel promised that the Winter was drawing to its close, but it had not seemed so during their stormy crossing to the mainland or the snowy ride to the capital for Tommen’s coming of age ceremony. It certainly did not seem so in the Red Keep’s draughty corridors or that icebox otherwise known as the Great Sept of Baelor, its myriad candles twinkling like stars, lending about as much warmth to the great domed space as if they had stood under the open night sky. The ceremony confirming Tommen as the rightful ruler of all Westeros took almost as long as Jaime’s knighting ceremony. By the end of it, Jaime was feeling his years and every single one of his long-healed injuries. His knees were like knots in old wood, and he was not too proud to lean on the arm Brienne offered him discreetly, the merest twitch in the corner of her mouth telling him she wished they could sit and warm their feet at a brazier too.

At that evening’s banquet to honor Kevan Lannister as he stepped down from his position as Tommen’s regent, it was announced that the following day the young king and his wife would lead the court in a great hunt in the Kingswood. Hearing this, an inkling took root and sprouted in Jaime’s mind. 

The morrow dawned crisp and clear. The wind soughing through the bare trees in the Kingswood reminded Jaime eerily of the tales which had lent the Whispering Wood its name. Shaking off unpleasant memories, he caught the bridle of Brienne’s horse and led her off into the trees until the rest of the hunt passed them by. They were only there as the king’s uncle and aunt, and would not be missed in the great assembly of nobility and servants spreading through the forest like a plague of rats hungry for a single fox or boar. 

“Jaime, where are we going?” Brienne asked with amused tolerance as their horses ambled through the trees, the distant hunting horns serving only to underscore the quiet in their part of the Kingswood. 

“I’ll tell you when we get there.” 

Brienne shook her head but did not object. She had little taste for hunting an animal for amusement rather than necessity, and even less taste for the twittering of the court ladies and the booming falseness of the menfolk. 

“Ah,” Jaime said when they got there. 

It was perfect. A secluded glade in a part of the forest so remote the sounds of the hunt intruded not at all. And there was even a convenient fallen tree in the clearing, the log smooth and almost perfectly bench-shaped. 

Really, it was the log which decided Jaime. 

“Couldn’t have wished for a better spot,” he announced with great satisfaction while Brienne tied the horses to a low-hanging branch. 

Jaime sat on the log and beckoned his wife over to sit beside him. She raised an eyebrow in a gesture she had picked up from him over the years, and joined him. Jaime covered them both with his cloak for warmth, then took Brienne’s right hand, pulled off her glove, blew on her fingers to warm them, and drew her hand down to his lap. 

“Jaime.” Brienne’s objection was at least half for show. She knew him well enough to have guessed what he had planned as soon as he led her away from the hunt. “We could have stayed in our chambers at the Keep and done this under covers, next to a brazier.” Despite her ritualized protest, she unlaced his breeches quickly and deftly. 

“The servants at the Keep still talk about the last time we broke one of their precious historic beds, and the walls are full of eyes and ears. You’ve gotten particular with age, Brienne.” He paused to sigh through his nose as her fingers wrapped around him, warm and moist with his breath. “To think the second time I had you was by the Kingsroad in a forest glade not unlike this one. And the third. And the fourth.” 

“The third time was in an unplowed field, and back then there was only a little snow on the ground. This log we’re sitting on is frozen solid and hard as the Iron Throne,” Brienne said as she squeezed and fondled him, and nuzzled his beard. “And we were younger and better able to improvise,” she murmured against Jaime’s mouth. 

She kissed him, matched the strokes of her tongue on his to the movement of her hand. Jaime broke off only to whisper urgently: “Use your mouth, love.”

Brienne frowned a little, stroked him faster to make his eyelids drift shut. “I am not kneeling in frozen mud, Jaime. You’ll have to wait till we get back to our bed at the Keep.”

“Heartless wench,” he complained, but pulled her in for a deeper kiss. She was practically straddling him, his red cloak enclosing them like a tiny tent, her hand drawing him closer to the brink, when she felt something sag beneath them and pulled away from his mouth, stilling her hand. 

“Jaime, I think this log was rotten before it froze,” she said. 

Jaime was having a bit of trouble processing this as he remained focused on the fact that her hand was warm but unmoving on his cock. Before he could muster the wits to answer, he heard a sound like a crackling fire, which stretched and deepened until it became the ear-shattering crack of splitting wood. Brienne jumped off him, disentangling herself from his cloak just as the log broke right down the middle, spilling Jaime on his back, his heels pointing heavenward, his cock left to shrivel in the icy air. 

His laughter resounded around the clearing and spread through the forest. It seemed the only appropriate reaction. 

“It’s destiny, wench,” Jaime hooted. “Whatever we touch turns into a bed. At least this time the whole of the hunting party won’t descend on us to see what the commotion is.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them, the noise you’re making,” Brienne muttered as she pulled him up by his good hand. “I never thought I’d say this, but I would prefer having the Master of Whisperers’ little birds look in on us, if it meant we could at least be warm when next we break something.”


	8. Tarth Part IV

After their latest bed let loose an ominous creak, nearly a crack, one night when the breeze coming in under the door was just starting to smell of growing things again, Jaime decided he was not taking any more chances. Brienne was big with child, and he was not going to risk her injuring herself just so they could sate themselves until the babe was born. He also had not the slightest intention of contenting himself with his left hand, even though Evenfall Hall’s maester estimated Brienne had less than two moons left to wait. 

The solution was simple and elegant. Jaime had Evenfall’s master stonemason fashion him a large stone chair with a seat roomy enough that a man could sit on it with a pregnant woman on his lap, and have neither feel hemmed in. 

In fact, that was exactly how he explained the desired size of the chair to the grinning stonemason, seating himself on a bench and indicating with his arms how wide the armrests should be. The stonemason worked very quickly, for he was very fond of m’lady and, like most islanders, had grown to accept her grinning, quick-witted husband, who had a terrible reputation and a fearsome name but was clearly devoted to his wife. 

It took three large men to lug the heavy stone chair up the stairs and into Jaime and Brienne’s bedchamber. Brienne observed the proceedings with some misgiving. Once she was alone with the chair, her smugly smiling husband and her round belly, she watched the chair warily, as though it might break right in front of her eyes, just to spite her. 

“Was this really necessary? We could have waited.”

“Wench, I was done waiting the night after we came back from that little altercation with the Brotherhood Without Banners. And since wood is treacherous, and you are in no condition to go for a ride in the stables just now…” 

She blushed, as Jaime had known she would. He demonstrated the chair’s benefits by seating himself on its thickly padded seat and indicating all the space left for her. 

Brienne still looked dubious. The chair was oddly throne-like, and seeing Jaime seated on it conjured up all kinds of unpleasant memories about his past. 

“Brienne,” he said gently, seeing the memories scud across her scarred face like storm clouds. He crooked his fingers at her, spread his legs a little. “Come and sit here, my lady.” 

She never could resist that tone in his voice, not since the day in his chambers in the White Sword Tower when he had told her to shut the door and come closer. So she went to him. 

Jaime unlaced her breeches, which Pia had let out so many times they were more patchwork than breeches, and pulled them and Brienne’s smallclothes down while she held onto his shoulders. She hated how slow and ungainly and _big_ she was, her slightest movements augmented, spreading into the space around her like the clang of a bell on the still air. Immediately she felt guilty for thinking ill in any way of the life growing inside her, and laid an apologetic hand on her belly. 

Jaime kissed it, looking up at her, eyes shining with pride and desire, and pulled her down onto his lap. Brienne squirmed, feeling vaguely silly to be sitting on her husband’s lap like a child being comforted by a parent. Her hand fluttered between them, but Jaime pushed it away gently. For all that he did not intend to wait to enjoy his wife, he wanted to see her reaction to what they might do in their stone chair first. 

Brienne sighed as soon as Jaime’s fingers, grown deft over time with sword, dagger _and_ her, slipped between her thighs. Jaime smiled against the goose-pimpled skin of her neck as she began to moan. She needed this as much as he did, though she still hated to admit it, at least in words. She made tiny noises, half huffs half coos, as he circled his thumb and thrust, slow and steady to start with. She was heavy and smooth and round, so Jaime lifted his knees a bit and wrapped his maimed arm firmly around her waist, to prevent her sliding off his lap when she started to buck against his hand. 

When Brienne’s breaths went from slow trot to canter, and she lifted her leg over the armrest exactly as Jaime had hoped she would, he slipped his hand under her leg so he could thrust more deeply. She started to clench around his fingers, and Jaime nudged her with his head until she wrapped her arm around his neck, and he could duck under her armpit and lip her nipple. The size of her only allowed her to wear a simple shirt, and Jaime was grateful she had no jerkin for him to unlace or bindings to undo, just a shirt he lifted easily with his teeth before he could feast on her breast. He loved her muscular body, but he was only human and a part of him reveled in Brienne overflowing with flesh. She gasped when he bit her lightly, and sucked, long and hard and loud as he had learned she liked that night in his tent. Jaime told himself he should have his fill of her, so as not to begrudge their child when she or he temporarily replaced him in having preferred access to Brienne’s breasts. 

He held her close, and sucked, and thrust with his hand, while Brienne twitched, gripped his thigh and the stone armrest, and panted at the ceiling, her belly like a gently rolling wave under Jaime’s cheek. 

The stone did not break or crack. It did produce a sound like a whisper of rocks rubbing together, a sigh from the depths of the quarry. Jaime laughed around Brienne’s nipple, licked it to prolong her pleasure, as she sighed more and more deeply and relaxed against him. 

“I am too heavy for wood, metal, even stone,” she murmured, sated, rueful. 

Jaime kissed her reddening breast, her scarred cheek. “Nonsense. You’re just too vigorous for anything hewn from cliff or forest, my lady.” 

“You’re a fine one to talk, ser,” she replied, smiling, brushing him with her hip. He was hard and wanting in his breeches, and she half turned to kiss him and reach for him, her fingers still as nimble as the rest of her had grown large and heavy. The stone bided its time, but held fast under them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI everyone: I will be traveling for most of the pre-Christmas season, and will have very patchy Internet access. I still intend to post the last two chapters of this fic before I return from my travels on December 20 BUT you might have to wait a bit longer between chapters or for me to respond to your comments. Both of which will def. happen -- it's just that my posting and commenting schedule is likely to be a bit erratic in the next 2.5 weeks :-)


	9. Tarth Part V

The ninth time involved the bed once shared by Selwyn Tarth and his wife, and surprised no one. Not so much because of Jaime and Brienne’s well-earned reputation for destroying beds, but because Brienne’s strength was hardly diminished by pregnancy. 

As he wore a groove in the stone floor of the corridor outside his goodfather’s chambers, Jaime told himself again and again there was no such thing as an omen, either good or ill. Omens were for fools and sparrows. It made no matter that both his and Brienne’s mothers had died soon after being brought to bed with a child. Nor did it matter that Jaime was not wholly without experience when it came to birthing rooms, though he preferred not to think on that now. Nor that all of Brienne’s siblings were dead, and Selwyn Tarth had lain with numerous women in his marriage bed in the interim. Nor did it matter that it had been fucking _hours_ already, and Brienne, bathed in sweat and with the maester hunched between her legs, had only screamed once, to tell _Jaime_ to get out and not look at her. 

Jaime could hear her grunt and whimper through the closed door. He kept squeezing his hand hard enough to make his knuckles ache. Which was nothing compared to the pains shooting through the fisted fingers of his phantom hand. 

Brienne was still young, he repeated silently for the hundredth time. She was strong as a plow horse and stubborn as a whole pack of mules. She had wide hips and she was healthy, for all that it had taken him a long time to plant a child in her, despite the fervor and frequency of their couplings. 

It did Jaime’s heart not a lick of good to repeat the words, but it was the closest to prayer he could manage just then. 

Her father’s much-used bed was only serving as Brienne’s birthing bed because it did not have any obvious cracks or loose planks, unlike the bed Jaime and Brienne still slept in, but had abandoned in favor of the stone chair for all other purposes. 

Jaime paced, thinking he should have accepted Selwyn’s offer to join him over a cask of brandy in the great hall while they waited, and cursed himself for a heathen fool for not having commissioned a new birthing bed, trusting instead in his wife’s health and vigor. And stubbornness. That did make him smile, if only a little. Her pigheadedness alone had carried them through so much already. It would carry her and the babe through this as well. 

As though she had heard his thoughts, which Jaime was not entirely certain she had not, Brienne screamed. Or not exactly screamed. It was more akin to a pitched battle cry. She had shouted out ‘Tarth! Evenfall!’ in a similar tone while charging archers outside of Maidenpool, in what felt like and indeed had been another lifetime. 

She shouted her defiance again and again, and Jaime squeezed his fist until he was certain his fingers would break. It was all that kept him away from the chamber, his wife’s newly discovered modesty be damned and thrice-damned. 

Brienne shouted and wailed. Wood groaned, issued a formal protest, and splintered. 

Jaime nearly laughed. Of course she would break even the birthing bed! Regret and anger at not being there with her washed over him, but then he realized someone was still wailing, only it wasn’t Brienne. Brienne had never sounded so small and lost and outraged, even when she had been a babe herself. 

Jaime stood in the corridor outside his goodfather’s chambers, and listened to his child take big, lusty breaths and scream its tiny lungs out. He wiped his eyes hastily with the back of his hand when the door started to open. Thrice-damned himself if he let some serving maid see him cry. 

Not just some serving maid. Pia was the first person out of the room, the smile on her face fit to split her head in two, all of her broken teeth on display. “It’s a boy!” she exclaimed. 

Pod appeared behind her, shaking his hand with a deeply pained expression. Jaime tamped down his irritation at Brienne wanting her squire there to hold her hand, but not her own husband. He knew the deep, wordless trust which existed between Brienne and Pod, and that having the silent, stoic lad by her side was easier than having Jaime there with his endless stream of jests and japes, but still: it rankled. 

“It’s a…” Pod paused, swallowed, shuffled his feet. “It’s a girl. Ser Jaime.” 

Jaime stared at the beaming woman and the shy lad. He licked his lips.

“Brienne?” His voice sounded hoarse in his ears.

“Oh, she’s fine!” Pia said. “Nearly singing.”

“Ser Lady’s fine, Ser Jaime,” Pod confirmed more sedately. 

Pia returned to the birthing room. Jaime immediately seized Pod by the shoulder. Pod winced as strong fingers dug into flesh and sinew. 

“Brienne’s fine? She’s well? A girl, you say?” Jaime asked, still hoarse. 

Pod nodded, not meeting his eye.

Jaime took a deep breath. “Tell me true, Podrick: was Pia anywhere near my wife when the babe came out?”

Pod blushed Lannister crimson, but he managed to look Jaime in the eye before he shook his head. “Pia was by the window, helping with the linens,” he said quietly, reluctant to betray his friend’s enthusiasm. “Didn’t even see the babe until the maester had her all swaddled up. But she thinks every firstborn should be a boy, so…”

Jaime allowed himself to slump with relief. He had grown quite fond of Pia over the years, but if anyone could muddle things up and turn a boy into a girl simply by picking them up when they were newborn and didn’t yet know what was what, it would be Pia. 

“Right,” Jaime said, straightening up to his full height and releasing Pod. “Right. Podrick, go back in there and tell my wife I am coming in to see her and our child, so she should close her legs if she thinks I’ll see aught I haven’t seen before. Then go tell Lord Selwyn the news before Pia convinces him he has a mummer’s freak for a grandchild.” 

The retreating crimson rushed back to Podrick’s face like the evening tide, but the lad grinned before he ducked back into the room. Jaime took a few more deep breaths before he squared his shoulders, composed his features into what he hoped was a suitably proud and fond expression with just a hint of a grin, and strode into the birthing room, beckoned on by his daughter’s first cries.


	10. Tarth Part VI

Pod had received strict instructions to take Myra out into the yard for some sea air and sunshine. Now that Spring had finally arrived, her mother was particularly anxious that the girl should spend time out of doors, hoping that proximity to the boys practicing with swords and maces in the yard might kindle a desire for a wooden practice sword in the little girl. So far Myra showed more interest in dolls and dresses than in swords, but nobody held that against her. 

They were not, however, in the yard. 

The other household knights teased him, but the young women of Tarth always looked appreciative when they spotted Pod with his charge, and whispered about that young knight making someone a fine husband one day soon. Pod couldn’t recall anything in his knight’s vows about playing septa to Ser Lady’s daughter, but he didn’t really mind. Ser Lady didn’t trust septas, but she did trust him, and Pod had the most patience of anyone at Evenfall. 

He had attempted to persuade Myra to go outside several times, but he was not more stubborn than a three-year-old, and was not willing to lift and carry her either. So they lingered and watched as a dozen men struggled to get the large stone bedstead through the door of Evenfall’s main hall and up the great staircase to the wing where Ser Lady and Ser Jaime’s chamber waited at the end of a long corridor. The master stonemason kept a beady eye on his proudest creation and uttered the occasional imprecation at the workers’ clumsiness. Pod attempted to clap his hands over Myra’s ears every time the stonemason cursed. He was usually too late. Fortunately the girl was more interested in the spectacle of twelve brawny men weaving under the weight of her parents’ new bed than she was in the arcane language used by the stonemason. 

The workers were just starting to negotiate the broad, shallow stairs when Pia came upon Myra and Pod. 

“They won’t be breaking that one, for sure,” she announced with a close-mouthed grin, as usual completely oblivious to Pod’s oft-expressed thoughts on subjects which should not be discussed around children. 

“That’s my mama and papa’s bed,” Myra announced proudly, as though her parents had conjured it up themselves the same way they made food arrive before her when she was hungry and caused nameday presents to appear beside her little bed. 

“I know, little lady,” Pia said. “And look how big it is. Half an army could bed down on it! Mayhaps they’s getting ready to fill it with more like you already.” 

Pod frowned at Pia, half in curiosity, half in trepidation at what she was about to say next. When Ser Jaime had knighted him and Peck at the very tail end of Winter, Pod chose to stay and serve House Tarth, but Peck wanted adventure, so he kissed Pia goodbye and hugged Pod manfully and sailed away to seek glory and riches. Some days Pod wished Peck was still there to occupy Pia’s time, which he had been better able to do than the various men she sometimes saw in the laundry room. 

Pia caught Pod’s questioning look and supplied an explanation happily enough. “They’s breaking the wooden bed, the last one, you know? He said it was for good luck. ‘Out wif the wood, in wif the new.’ Made her laugh.” 

Pod knew he would blush, but he could not restrain himself. “Ser Jaime said this in front of _you_?”

“Naw. I looked in on them.” 

Pod stared and blushed, opened his mouth and closed it, and stared some more. 

“They didna hear me, the way they was going at it. I just peeked in.” Pia ruffled Myra’s straw-blond hair. “Your mama’ll be wif child again soon, you’ll see. A little brother or sister for you.”

“I don’t want a brother or sister,” Myra groused, sounding uncannily like her father when he was in one of his moods. 

Pod decided it was high time he regained control of the situation. He took Myra by the hand, firmly intending to lead her out to the yard, but he wasn’t quick enough. Pia seized the little one’s other hand and started back in the direction she had just come from, saying something about proving to Myra and Pod she spoke true. Pod tried to dig his heels in, realized Myra would be torn between them as on a rack, and hurried after Pia and Myra, trying desperately to come up with a way to prevent Pia from doing something truly foolish. Something that would cause Myra to ask her parents where babes came from, or worse, in the middle of supper with Lord Selwyn, and land Pod in extremely hot water. 

He could think of nothing before they reached the door of a disused chamber where old furniture and other household odds and ends were kept. The door was closed, small mercies so far as Pod was concerned, but there came from within an odd sound, a unique sound, a sound Pod had never heard before and was fairly certain not many people had, yet which his ample experience allowed him to identify at once: the sound of a broken bedstead being put to vigorous use. The wood whined in rhythmic, futile, defeated protest, nearly drowning out the noises made by the couple on top of it. 

The instant Pia let go of Myra’s hand, Pod grabbed the little girl gently by the shoulders, pivoted her around, and marched her back down the corridor. Charity and friendship made him stop at the top of the stairs and look back. 

Pia had her head behind the half-open door, her skinny body wrapped around it like a curious snake. 

“Pia!” Pod hissed in horror. He could hear Ser Jaime and Ser Lady clearly now, and Myra was frowning in a way which suggested she was about to demand the adults tell her whatever it was they were not telling her _right now._ Loudly. 

Pia unwound herself from the door and closed it with barely a snick of the falling latch. She really could be very quiet and discreet when she wanted, Pod thought with relief. 

“You’re all right for now, little lady,” Pia told Myra solemnly. “He’s not getting her with child _that way_.”


End file.
